Trade Unionism in Albania After 1985

Contributed by Edlira Xhafa

Albania’s transition from the Stalinist regime of Enver Hoxha in the early 1990s was accompanied by radical market reforms, otherwise known as shock therapy. It was a period marked by very high unemployment due to massive privatisation of state-owned enterprises, including the most strategic sectors of the economy, poverty wages, degrading, and commercialised public services, as well as patchy and weak social protection. Abandoned by the state, migration, a phenomenon which continues unabated, became the main way out for millions of people.

What makes the Albanian case rather special is that there was hardly any resistance to the shock therapy reforms by the trade unions.

The early 90s saw the emergence of two main trade union confederations: the Albanian Confederation of Trade Unions (KSSH), which came out of what was known as the professional associations during the Hoxha regime; and the Union of Independent Trade Unions (BSPSH), which had its origin on the mineworkers’ movement of the early 1990s, an important factor in the fall of the Stalinist regime. Their genesis is at the root of the persistent conflict between them, which over the years has been personalised by the leaders of the respective organisations. Despite very different origins and the persistent fight between them, the two established confederations share extremely similar features. Employing very limited staff, which includes no organisers, they remain financially solvent thanks to income from renting out workers’ properties inherited from the state-controlled trade union. Such funding, however, has increasingly diminished, due to shady contracts, as evidenced by several journalistic investigations. As a result, many of workers’ properties have been lost to private subjects. The leadership in the official unions that came to power in the early 90s continues to be the face of these organisations today.

Regardless of inflated, self-reported figures, the unionisation rates are extremely low. The two confederations are mainly present in the public sector and in a few large companies, which were once state-owned (e.g., mines). Even where present, they are best characterised as yellow trade unions. This became blatantly clear during one of the most inspiring stories of workers self-organising in one of the big mines (in Bulqiza), operated by the richest man in Albania, the billionaire Samir Mane (Xhafa 2020). From its first day of formation in November 2019, the mineworkers union (the Trade Union of United Mineworkers of Bulqiza, TUUMB) came under the triple attack of the employer, which dismissed the founding union members, the State, which used its authority to intimidate workers, and the existing trade unions - the Trade Union Federation of Industrial Workers, and the Albanian Confederation of Trade Unions, to which the former is affiliated. After years of repression, today, the union is hardly active. Other bottom-up worker organising, such as in the call centres, are also struggling to survive.

The few stories of worker self-organising outside the yellow trade unions, are a testimony to the difficult birth of a genuine labour movement in Albania. The fragile emergence and existence of these organisations reflects the impact of the decades-long history of a brutal Stalinist regime which has significantly eroded trust and meaningful solidarity among people. Thus, building workers’ organisations is an exceptionally difficult process, which would have not been possible without the hard and consistent organising work by a group of (young) labour activists who have also been heavily involved in organising the student protests against tuition fees that rocked Albania in December 2018/January 2019 (Xhafa, 2019). Trained initially by the Global Labour Institute in June 2017 and then by the UNI Global Union, the activists went on to support worker organising and the establishment of bottom-up, genuine trade unions in call centers and in the mines. As the group of activists has most recently formed a political party committed to the cause of working people, the efforts to support worker collective organising in real trade unions continue.

References

• _________.2019. For the University, for the Society. https://socialistproject.ca/2019/01/for-the-university-for-the-society/
• Edlira Xhafa. 2020. The difficult birth of an independent labour movement in Albania. https://globallabourcolumn.org/2020/01/16/algorithms-data-and-a-new-labour-agenda-2/